Can ANY person be trained to provide phenomenal service?

Everyone can be trained to provide phenomenal service but not everyone can fully follow it, however here are the challenges:

 1- Even if the employee is able to listen, apologize and show empathy he could not have the ability to solve the problem due to his position and limited experience in such situation. Empathy will be achieved but still the main concern of the guest is not fixed and he is expecting an answer, an explanation or maybe a compensation for his issue.

2- The consistency. 

If there is no hotel proper SOPs ( standard operating procedure) in place and trained, then everyone react and respond in different way. Guidelines should be given clearly in a flow chart style.

Working in a multi national environment with dozen of nationalities while having each person having his own style to address issues could be one the main thing to regulate. For example, in the MOD "manager on duty" schedule in the evening it's a rotation of HODs (head of department), from 8 managers doing it there are from 8 different nationalities, the results could be so opposite. It could be a problem because each one think he's right to say or to reply such, while another manager would have done completely different in the same situation. From their international experience, different background and mainly from their origins they have different opinion and they will handle the case differently. It’s very rich but it’s also very weak if there is no cooperation and consistency, it could turn to be a chaos.

Sometimes standardization is not possible due to “ego sensibility”. From the right bundle could come the perfect combination but the art is how to make the oil enter in the mayonnaise.

The main challenge is to make everyone speaking the same language and having the same reaction in respond to the same problem, complain or incident.

A service employee's verbal response is extremely important

3- Some bottom line employee do not have the authority and power of decision, a supervisor or manager then must be called. So they are limited in the description of "providing phenomenal service", they could provide only "basic" service. 

4-Creating a company culture take time and often the hotel industry faces a nigh turn over of employee, so each time new session of training are required, it is never ends.

The company culture has a strong effect on the service employee's ability to provide verbal responses that contribute to phenomenal service.

5- Some employees are lacking of concerns and it can affect the whole organization. For example finance team employees are difficult to be adapted to "customer oriented attitude" and the challenge is to put them in the shoes of the customers not behind a screen and a calculator. 

Back of the house & front of the house of the hotel have more or less phenomenal service attitude, but it can be addressed and trained.